


Red Awakening

by VisceralComa



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen, Red Lyrium, Red Lyrium Varric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-02 07:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18806614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VisceralComa/pseuds/VisceralComa
Summary: How Varric survived the Red Lyrium Future.





	Red Awakening

We are here  
We have waited  
We have slept  
We are sundered  
We are crippled  
We are polluted  
We endure  
We wait  
We have found the dreams again  
We will awaken

 

Yesterday or yesteryear, it happened as quick as the Tevinter tried to explain it away with his little cube of time.

He cared little. Even less so for surviving this nightmare as Alexius’s guards came for them. The Herald gone. Up in a swirl of light and smoke. Gone.

_Magic._

Typical.

They'd locked them up. Him and Tiny. He'd gotten wind of the Nightingale being caught and when the screams began...well. He tried to make himself forget.

Once, Bartrand told him he'd prayed to the stone in Orzammar and sometimes they answered. Well there were stone bricks in his cell. Andraste and the Maker sure as shit weren't listening or watching. At least the stone was there. Real. Solid.

Red.

Twice a day they fed the red stuff to them. In their food, in their water.

He wondered if this is what Bartrand felt. When the idol got hold of him. It was almost warm and pleasant at first. He tried to hold off, but you could only starve yourself so long before you took the red stuff.

He didn't pray to the stone. No. He was still firmly Andrastian, despite certain Seeker’s low opinion of him.

Instead he told it stories. Everything, anything. Manuscripts never written. Ideas never properly formulated.

They forgot him once. He was a dwarf. Not much use of dwarves in magic rituals.

He got desperate. Desperate enough he recited The Mercenary’s Price.

That's when the stone responded. Humming appreciative and low. It looked less red than the crystals in the opposite cell. Their inhabitant long since succumbed to the growing mass. He could just make out their decaying remains, if he squinted.

The red lyrium grew of course. But when he told it stories, it slowed. Hesitant and yet warm. Not searing hot like the visiting Templars and Mages said.

She was comforting. His only companion and friend.

Like Hawke. He missed Hawke. Missed the smooth red streak across her nose as she applied the kaddis every morning. Missed how she brazenly walked out of his room every morning yet snuck back into Gamlen’s house before breakfast. Missed the sway of her hips when she got feisty in battle, toying with them. It was eerily similar to how her hips undulated on top of him. She fought like she fucked and fucked like she fought.

She was a force to be reckoned with. Aggressive and sharp and damn proud of it.

He told the Red Stone about his Red Hawke. Regaled her with the truths he never told the Seeker. Every intricate and dirty detail. How she slept her way through her friends. How she simultaneously saved and ruined Kirkwall.

No. She didn't ruin it.

Varric snarled in the memory. The apostate mage did.

What did Fenris say? What does magic touch that it doesn't spoil?


End file.
